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Network Newsletter  Rights and Democracy Network Number 31 June 1st, 2010 Newsletter Sections |
Looking back, looking forward: the 2010 Annual Event
The objective of the annual event of the Rights & Democracy Student Network, from May 6 to 8, was to review the activities of the Network and its delegations during 2009-2010, and to look to the future. Network participants, mentors and staff members discussed some of the delegations’ fruitful initiatives on campus, major challenges they face as well as the Network’s future. A roundtable discussion on the importance of women’s human rights within Rights & Democracy’s projects was also organized followed by a workshop on how to integrate gender-specific concerns into student projects on campus. In addition, students and guest mentors (former Network students) presented promising ideas for the Network and laid the groundwork for regional events in 2010-2011 that will welcome delegations from Eastern and Western Canada.
Lastly, the small, tightly-knit, dynamic group of participants truly inspired the Rights & Democracy Student Network by giving them the ideas and energy they will need to kick off the 2010 university school year. Thanks to all of you for your honest and generous contributions! All of the delegations are sure to reap the benefits!
Stay connected! The Back-to-School Retreat will be held from August 26 to 29!
The Back-to-School Retreat will be held earlier this year so that the delegations can take full advantage of opportunities to recruit new members. University delegations should already start thinking about who could participate in the Retreat. It’s important to stay connected over the summer, since the call for nominations will take place between now and the end of June. Remember: The Retreat is designed to kick off the activities of the Network of student delegations for the upcoming year. This is an opportunity for participating students to learn about Rights & Democracy and its Student Network, particularly human rights and development which are the main focus of the institution and its partners. The Retreat is also a platform for acquiring the skills and tools needed to successfully implement projects during the university year.
To find out more about the Retreat, its objectives and the conditions for participation, contact Nelly Desrosiers at ndesrosiers@dd-rd.ca.
Successful benefit show by the Rights & Democracy Delegation at UQAM in support of women in Zimbabwe
On March 19, 2010, in the context of the Rights & Democracy Network Eastern Regional Event, the UQAM Delegation put on a benefit show to support and celebrate the courage of four Zimbabwean women who spoke out in the documentary Hear Us, produced by Zimbabwe’s Research Advocacy Unit (RAU), about the sexual and physical abuses they suffered during the 2008 election crisis.
The benefit raised $1100 for these four women.
The evening began with a video with a poignant message of gratitude by the four women and RAU spokesperson Kudakwashe Chitsike, followed by a talk by Michael Wodzicki, Deputy Director, Policy, Programmes and Planning, at Rights & Democracy. Guest artist Ricardo “Emrical” Lamour Blaise offered a moving performance combining slam poetry and his personal experiences.
Urban poet Fabrice Koffy, accompanied by violinist Sian, performed songs off her album Poetic. With her charm and gentle touch, Koffyprompted the audience to reflect on the status of women by touching on issues specific to Africa and poverty. The highlight of the show was the dance performance Sisi by Zimbabwean choreographer and dancer Gibson Muriva, accompanied by Jenny Brizard, Émilie Tremblay and Fernanda Leal. A veritable gem in contemporary African dance, Sisi (sister in the Shona language) tells the story of four sisters shackled by gender, culture and the HIV epidemic ravaging Zimbabwe. The dance was performed to the rhythm of African music on the mbira (or thumb piano), Zimbabwe’s national instrument. The dancers delivered a highly skilled and heartfelt performance that was surprisingly powerful.
The Rights & Democracy Delegation at UQAM wishes to thank all audience members for their generous contribution, the Rights & Democracy Student Network and the Service à la vie étudiante de l’UQAM for their financial support, as well as the artists and women of Zimbabwe for their renewed courage during the recording.
To find out more about the Rights & Democracy Delegation at UQAM and its activities, click here.
Evening on the Democratic Republic of the Congo organized by the Université Laval Delegation
On March 18, 2010, the Rights & Democracy Delegation at Université Laval organized a thematic evening on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The many enthusiastic participants had a chance to learn more about the DRC, the theatre of a civil war marked by systematic and daily attacks on civilians, in particular women and girls. The evening at Université Laval began with a presentation of the documentary Women in war: a particularly vulnerable group? produced by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The audience then listened to experts Gisèle-Eva Côté, Programme Officer, Women’s Rights, at Rights & Democracy; Kadari Mwene-Kabyana, political scientist and professor at Université de Chicoutimi and Martin Girard from Médecins sans frontières.
The delegation also organized a mural competition on the same theme in order to embellish the underground tunnel that links the university buildings. Hélène Matte, a student at Université Laval, won the competition. Her work, inspired by a drawing done in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2004 (see the photo opposite), will be completed in May.
To find out more about the Rights & Democracy Delegation at Université Laval and its activities, click here.
The Mount Allison Delegation: Fair Trade as a Way to Protect Human Rights
A week before Easter, the Mount Allison University Delegation launched an information campaign on fair trade chocolate and how consumers of chocolate can hinder or protect the rights of workers picking cocoa pods. The delegation's goal? Getting the university community to make different choices during Easter and not buy unfairly traded chocolate. The delegation used a wide range of innovative, « in-your-face » campaign strategies that even included a hand-crafted child perched in a tree! The delegation first plastered campus with questions, provoking discussion about who produces the goods that we buy and their rights. They placed little facts, stats, and questions on the desks in the university's auditorium, and a page of questions in the napkin dispensers in the meal hall. The delegation knows that their strategies bore fruit: they would see people standing, waiting for class, just talking about fair trade!
The Mount Allison campaign culminated with a “Fairly Traded Chocolate Easter Event” on the morning of Easter Sunday. Children from the community, students and faculty came out, searched for chocolate and stood around and discussed the lives and rights of the workers who pick the pods that become the chocolate that we consume. The delegation discovered that many participants had not tried fair trade chocolate before, and some people didn't know the difference between free trade and fair trade.
For more information about the Mount Allison Delegation, click here.
Stories from the Field: Inspiring others with your stories working around the world
Stories from the Field: Inspiring others with your stories working around the world
Are you heading off this summer to do work in a developing country? Do you have a story to share that relates to human rights or democratic development? We would love to hear from you.
First ask for the “Stories from the Field” guidelines by writing to Nelly Desrosiers, Network Liaison Officer, at ndesrosiers@dd-rd.ca
Rights & Democracy in Indonesia: Access to land is vital to the right to food
Rights & Democracy Senior Advisor on Economic and Social Rights, Carole Samdup, returned recently from Indonesia, where she and Senior Advisor of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Ms. Priscilla Claeys, consulted with a number of local organizations, including La Via Campesina(LVC), the world's largest association of peasants, agricultural workers, small holders farmers, and fishers.
Credit: Flickr.com. Marina & Enrique photo Gallery. Click here to read the conditions of use.
Thanks to support from Rights & Democracy, an LVC subcommittee has been monitoring and promoting human rights around the world and is now supporting the recently-adopted Declaration on the Rights of Peasant Farmers (see A/HRC/13/32). The LVC and its partners are considering new initiatives designed to move the Declaration into a convention-style document aimed at encouraging government dialogue with farmers and their associations.
Carole and Ms. Claeys traveled to small farming villages in Bogor and Warung Kiara. In Bogor, they engaged in rich discussions with small-scale farmers attending a technical training centre managed by Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI), a local peasant association. In the absence of effective government programmes in this remote village, SPI offers famers a way to develop their capacity in the areas of organic farming, seed saving, collective marketing, and basic accounting procedures. In Warung Kiara, Carole and Ms. Claeys interviewed families about an ongoing land dispute affecting close to 2,000 subsistence farmers. A government-run rubber company and development project has hindered the community's access to and use of the land and has denied them water for irrigation. The community, whose request for title of the land is now stuck in red tape, has also been subjected to reprisals by private security firms.
The dispute in Warung Kiara is just one of hundreds of similar cases of hunger and land access issues across Indonesia. In a meeting with representatives of Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission, Carole and Ms. Claeys heard that the Commission has 5,000 pending cases related to land claims before it. Taken together, these cases reveal the extent of the human rights violations perpetrated by corporate activity in the plantation and mining sectors and the scourge of cronyism of government elites with respect to land designations for things like parks and forest reserves and titling abuses including manipulation of ceiling regulations.
For more information about Rights & Democracy's economic and social rights programme, click here. For more information about our work in Indonesia, click here.
Rights & Democracy in Afghanistan: Afghan Sunni Family Law
Over the last year, Rights & Democracy has contributed to law-making process and women's rights in Afghanistan in a wide variety of ways. These Rights & Democracy initiatives included: providing support to the Women's Commission in its work on the Elimination of Violence Against Women law; participating in UNIFEM's strategic committee to issue recommendations on this law; organizing meetings on the lawmaking process with its partners; and participating in numerous events or gatherings of foreign organizations in need of expertise on the law-making process and women's rights-related issues.
Rights & Democracy Project Officer Alexandra Gilbert and our local staff in Kabul have led the Family Law Drafting Committee which proposed amendments to the Shiite Personal Status Law, to the Afghan Ministry of Justice, of which over 60% were included in a revised Shiite Personal Status Law published in Afghanistan's Official Gazette in July 2009. The new law seeks to protect and promote women's rights in the country. The Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs also invited the DC and R&D's staff to join a consultative committee responsible for drafting Afghanistan's first report on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). This is a valuable acknowledgement of the expertise that has been developed by the DC over the last three years, with the continued support of Rights & Democracy. Rights & Democracy was also invited to participate in a steering committee led by the Ministry of Women Affairs to define priorities that need to be addressed at the upcoming Peace Jirga scheduled for later this month as well as at the international Kabul Conference to be held in July.
Rights & Democracy also worked at local level with Afghan civil society organisations (CSOs) in five provinces. Staff offered training-of-trainers workshops to over 516 community leaders on women's rights is Islam and specific trainings for mullahs on the new national marriage contract. These leaders returned to their communities to replicate the trainings to around 50 000 participants. Rights & Democracy facilitated training for Afghan women's organizations on the experiences of Moroccan women's movements in efforts to reform Family Law there, which was delivered by a representative of Global Rights in Morocco. Rights & Democracy continued its valuable partnerships with local organizations providing legal aid services in the area of family law; local women's radio to broadcast radio spots on family law related issues; and various women's organizations working on women's rights and funded by Rights & Democracy.
For more information about Rights & Democracy's work in Afghanistan, click here.
Hope and Humanitarian Space in Burma
May 10, 2010 BANGKOK--Two years ago, in early May 2008, Cyclone Nargis destroyed much of Burma's Irrawaddy Delta and parts of its former capital city Rangoon with 160 kilometer winds and a massive storm surge, killing more than 140,000 people. The ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) then failed to help, prioritizing their iron-clad grip on the country over the well-being of the Burmese people. They refused visas to international emergency relief workers, set up roadblocks to stall and in some cases seize aid, and expelled foreign reporters who were bringing the desperate situation to light. Only after the completion of the SPDC's charade referendum on a new constitution did they finally allow international aid to reach the storm victims.
To read the rest of this news story published by Human Rights Watch, please click here.
May 3: World Press Freedom Day
World Press Freedom Day was established by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December, 1993. A free press is key to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation, and for economic development. Although World Press Freedom Day has only been celebrated since 1993, it has much deeper roots in the United Nations: Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.
To know more about World Press Freedom Day, click here.
To know more about the state of press freedom around the world and particularly in countries where Rights & Democracy and its partners' work, visit the website of Reporters Without Borders.
The Network’s on-line forum announces job and internship opportunities in Canada. To access the forum, you must be a member of the Rights & Democracy Network. Become a member by signing up here: http://www.dd-rd.net/members/
If you are already a member, visit the Forum’s jobs and internships section by clicking here: http://www.droitsdemocratie.net/network-forum/index.php?login_lang=en.
We welcome your feedback on our stories. Articles on your experiences related to human rights and democratic development in developing countries are also truly appreciated. Send your comments and articles to the editor by email to ndesrosiers@dd-rd.ca (please write “For Rights & Democracy Student Network Newsletter” in the subject field).
The Network Team:
Coordinator: Elana Wright (interim)
Liaison Officer: Nelly Desrosiers (interim)
Administrative Assistant: Lise Lortie
Rights & Democracy Network
1001 de Maisonneuve Blvd. E., Suite 1100
Montreal, Quebec H2L 4P9 CANADA
Phone: 514 283-6073
Toll-free: 1-877-736-3833
Fax: (514) 283-3792
network@dd-rd.ca
www.rightsdemocracy.net
Available issues :
Issue 31 (June 1st, 2010)
Issue 30 (March 16, 2010)
Issue 29 (November 9,2009)
Issue 28 (September 25, 2009)
Issue 27 (July 28, 2009)
Issue 26 (March 27, 2009)
Issue 25 (January 29, 2009)
Issue 24 (December 9, 2008)
Issue 23 (October 29, 2008)
Issue 22 (August 27, 2008)
Issue 21 (July 23, 2008)
Issue 20 (April 24, 2008)
Issue 19 (March 27, 2008)
Issue 18 (January 24, 2008)
Issue 17 (December 20, 2007)
Issue 16 (November 27, 2007)
Issue 15 (November 6, 2007)
Issue 14 (October 18, 2007)
Issue 13 (September 25, 2007)
Issue 12 (September 11, 2007)
Issue 11 (Summer 2007)
Issue 10 (April 13, 2007)
Issue 9 (November 2006)
Issue 8 (August 2006)
Issue 7 (May 4, 2006)
Issue 6 (April 12, 2006)
Issue 5 (March 21, 2006)
Issue 4 (March 1, 2006)
Issue 3 (February 16, 2006)
Issue 2 (January 31, 2006)
Issue 1 (January 17, 2006)
